SCULPTING THROUGH FILM

Yuri Ancarani in conversation with Lucia Aspesi

In this conversation with Lucia Aspesi, Yuri Ancarani talks about his approach to the different social, spatial and sound dimensions that characterize cinemas and museums, and notes the turning point in his research made by his latest film Atlantis.

Yuri Ancarani, Il Capo, 2010. Video still. Courtesy of the artist, ZERO…, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie

Lucia Aspesi: Before starting the interview, I have a confession to make: I am embarrassed to say that it is been more than a year since I have been to the cinema. Do you miss going to see films?

Yuri Ancarani: I have been lucky to travel a lot over the last few years and also participate in film festivals all over the world, and so I have had the chance to see the most recent productions. Normally, I am afraid to see films and I always ask people who know me for suggestions; it helps keep my suffering to a minimum, since it is very rare that I actually like one. I have even left the cinema room during projections. It is not enough for me to just watch a story, since in that case I would rather read it in a book, and imagine the characters, locations and settings myself. You do not have this space with the moving image, since all of your senses are concentrated on what you are seeing and this gives me an enormous feeling of responsibility. For me, entertainment as an end in itself is devastating.

LA: Your work is linked to the critical reflection that developed in the experimental film context in the 1970s and shifted from the projection room to the creation of multi-sensory immersive environments connected to contemporary practice. In this discourse, the influence of mass media activates a series of connections that move towards reconsideration of the social and collective aspects of film. Can you talk to us about your approach to the spatiality of the cinema?

YA: I think that even though a film is created to be watched, it watches you while you are watching it, and places like the cinema or museum are ideal for permitting the film to watch the viewer. These days, people tend to use a household appliance to watch films—a television, a computer or a mobile device—that has nothing to with what projection in a museum space can offer. I have also always been fascinated by the disproportion that you experience when you enter a space designated for film projection, where the people are so small compared to the screen, immediately creating an immersive condition in which sound also plays a key role. In the past, going to the cinema was a collective experience, where the sound of the film strip mixed with the noisy voices of the people in the audience, whereas now the room is filled with silence, like when you visit a museum.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED BY THE DISPROPORTION THAT YOU EXPERIENCE WHEN YOU ENTER A SPACE DESIGNATED FOR FILM PROJECTION, WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE SO SMALL COMPARED TO THE SCREEN, IMMEDIATELY CREATING AN IMMERSIVE CONDITION IN WHICH SOUND ALSO PLAYS A KEY ROLE. IN THE PAST, GOING TO THE CINEMA WAS A COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCE, WHERE THE SOUND OF THE FILM STRIP MIXED WITH THE NOISY VOICES OF THE PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE, WHEREAS NOW THE ROOM IS FILLED WITH SILENCE, LIKE WHEN YOU VISIT A MUSEUM.

Yuri Ancarani, The Challenge, 2016. Video still. Courtesy of the artist, ZERO…, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie

LA: I was pleasantly surprised to see Rome’s Augustus Color in the credits for your early works. It has been more than ten years since the first time I went there, and I can still remember the dark corridors lined with shelves chock-full of reels of Cinecittà films, from Luchino Visconti to Pier Paolo Pasolini. It felt like being on an underground train, travelling through the history of Italian cinema up to the age of television. Even though a film comes to life in front of a screen, its essence originates in the editing rooms and I am curious about what brought you there.

YA: Augustus Color is a facility that handles every aspect of post-production, from traditional printing to special digital effects. The first time I went there, I found myself in a maze of studios, each one devoted to a different area of expertise, immersing myself in a dimension which is worlds away from video-making, that I usually work with. It was very complex, but I literally grew up inside that building. Usually, the director manages his own team, which is in communication with the various professionals at the studio, and rarely shows up there. I have a different way of working: I enter when the work begins and do not leave until the film is finished, overseeing every phase. I know everyone at Augustus Color, from the intern to the night watchman and everyone knows about the film that is being made.

LA: How did you situate yourself in relation to video in your early work?

YA: I am a little bit of an autodidact. I got my education in the 1990s when video was still a young medium, which is why I found it more interesting than cinema. It was a lot more intuitive and direct, as well as a lot less expensive, and it let me express myself very quickly and without fuss. Cinema instead seemed entirely inaccessible, with all of the different workers and everything that derived from that. When people go see a film, no one ever thinks about the fact that there are a bunch of lorries behind the film camera. This seems shattering to me. To give an example, when you are choosing a shot, it is determined each and every time by the need to get three lorries to that spot, while for me this is like moving around with a very cumbersome backpack. I realise that I am speaking in extremes, but I think that making a film with the language of a video maker can break certain habits and push you to generate something new. My latest film—Atlantide (Atlantis, 2021), recently screened in the Orizzonti section of the 78th Venice International Film Festival organised by La Biennale di Venezia—gives tangible form to this idea.

Yuri Ancarani, “Sculture,” installation view on The Challenge, 2016 (left) and Wedding, 2016 (right), Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo by Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

LA: You talked about your transition from video to cinema and now I would like to take a closer look at another medium that, although it might seem paradoxical, I find really fascinating in your work. It is no accident that you used it symbolically as the title for your first major exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel in 2018, and it opens up a reading of your work that I find fundamental: sculpture. Besides being a more traditional medium in art history, it provides an opportunity to see how the moving image situates itself in relation to spatial and volumetric issues when presented in a museum context. And even if it seems like a contradiction in terms, your first film, Il Capo (The Chief, 2010), was made in a marble quarry. How did you come to this synthesis, which is already inscribed in what could be the incipit of an account of your two decades of work?

YA: Today we know that it is incorrect to think of the moving image as a space simply determined by the screen it is projected onto, since everyday life shows us that we live inside images. The borders between what is real and what is virtual keep getting weaker and the images on a mobile phone display have their own three-dimensionality. My characters interest me as human beings but also as forms, I am interested in looking at them and presenting them. This discourse is very clear in both Il Capo and Atlantide.

LA: I would like to keep talking about how you situate yourself in relation to an exhibition space, and I am curious about your relationship with time. 

YA: In contrast to other mediums, where the viewer decides how long to observe/contemplate at a work of art, with the moving image time is part of the work itself, and its duration is decided by the author, which gives him a big responsibility. Moreover, the exhibition space itself is in relation to time, and this relationship is tied to the viewer’s movement in the gallery, room after room. For me, creating an exhibition is like telling short, stand-alone stories, but a bigger universe takes shape in the experience each person has moving from one to the other. For example, San Siro (2014) is the backstage of a football game, but, when seen alongside the other films in the trilogy, San Vittore and San Giorgio, it is a precise reflection on what the three cement buildings where each film is set—a stadium, a prison and a bank—represent. This trilogy, “Le origini della violenza” (The Origins of Violence, 2014-19), investigates the way in which social control is based on two poles: punishment and entertainment.

Yuri Ancarani, San Siro, 2014. Video still. Courtesy of the artist, ZERO…, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie

LA: All of this makes me think about one of the feelings I experienced watching some of your films, where you seemed to portray a kind of “potential limit of human failure”. This happens, for example, through the precise description of a highly circumscribed field of knowledge—like a quarry foreman or surgeon—and, in the symbiosis that takes shape in your account, one infers possible defeat. In your films, the viewer finds herself absorbed, dwarfed, by something difficult to explain.

YA: I have been exploring the world designed by forms of patriarchy in my work for two decades now, trying to highlight these behaviours, observing them with extreme care, in all areas of our society. In this sense, the man/machine relationship, a theme that emerges in many of my films, is portrayed directly and the viewer is immersed from the very first frame in unnatural environments: like a hyperbaric chamber in Piattaforma Luna (Moon Platform, 2011) or a marble quarry or, in Da Vinci (2012), the inside of a human body.

LA: The sound component amplifies the situations you explore.

YA: In most of my films, the story is irrelevant, the images are what speak and, since there is not even any dialogue, sound becomes critical. Music is the soul of the film for it shapes its acoustic dramaturgy. In the cases where I do integrate speech, it has specific, unique acoustics, like in Piattaforma Luna, where the characters’ voices are altered by the helium in the hyperbaric chamber. And so, it is used as an acoustic instrument without narrative purpose. There are also some exceptions, like in Seance (2014), which is fundamentally a monologue told through a medium who speaks on behalf of Carlo Mollino.

Yuri Ancarani, Piattaforma Luna, 2011. Video still. Courtesy of the artist, ZERO…, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie

LA: I am also curious about the origin of another film of yours, Whipping Zombie (2017), filmed in Haiti, in which you use a close dialogue between images and sound to describe a ritual dance—referenced in the title of the film—expressed through movements evoking struggle and trance, triggering a continuous cycle of death and rebirth. 

YA: Whipping Zombie is a complex film and, to understand it, you need to consider its opposite, The Challenge (2017), both of which are set in two extreme geographical areas, far from the West—Qatar and Haiti. Both films talk about the decadence of the principles linked to capitalism and the exportation of its economic and cultural values, showing that something has gone wrong.

LA: You always find highly specific situations to shoot. You were talking before about your direct relationship with the camera and the relationship you establish with the person you decide to portray. How do you start to work on a film?

YA: I work very intuitively, things happen and the project gradually starts to take shape. Sometimes, I surprise myself, like in “Le origini della violenza” trilogy, where I realised at the end of filming that cement, bars, keys and the police were in all three films. Whereas I made the trilogy “La malattia del ferro” (The Malady of Iron, 2010-12) in order to explore the theme of work, shooting at the top of a mountain (Il Capo), at the bottom of the sea (Piattaforma Luna) and inside the human body (Da Vinci).

Yuri Ancarani, Whipping Zombie, 2017. Video still. Courtesy of the artist, ZERO…, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie

LA: Even after the premiere of a film, when it starts to have a life of its own on the distribution circuit, the reading of your work continues to develop independently.

YA: Artistic production is a path, and is difficult to understand even for its own author; it is a process that takes time to assimilate.

LA: Paradoxically, the idea of the everyday is also very present in your work, and what we are experiencing today is a drastic change.

YA: My previous working patterns had become unsustainable. I was doing multiple projects simultaneously, for example I filmed The Challenge and Whipping Zombie at the same time while also travelling around the United States and Europe to promote other films. This gave me the idea to work close to home, and I started filming Atlantide in Venice in 2018.

Yuri Ancarani, Atlantide, 2021. Video still. Courtesy of the artist

LA: How has the project changed over the past few years?

YA: The title Atlantide was set from the very first day. Over time, I tried to observe Venetian life up close, and I have to admit that it was more complicated than observing Saudi life. The film talks about the violent rituals that adolescents go through in order to become adults, told through the eyes of Maila and Daniele. I went to Venice, a city that everyone thinks they know but in reality no one can understand. Life plays out there on different circuits: student, tourist and resident. But its essence continued to escape me, and so I stopped looking at it from its buildings’ facades and started observing it from the lagoon, forcing myself out of the conventional perspective. That is how I saw that Venice is an island that you cannot understand unless you know the lagoon and the other islands. Venice is a destination. In order to understand it you have to arrive by water, not by land. Otherwise, you will never know it. And that was the origin of Atlantide.

— Translated from Italian by Sarah Elizabeth Cree